With last night’s ‘winner’ seen very much as ‘a safe pair of hands’ for the Portuguese presidency – a man not given to inconsistency or knee-jerk responses – António José Seguro has nonetheless warned that “nothing is guaranteed” in the second round of voting in three weeks’ time.
“In a democracy, nothing is guaranteed, least of all victories. We have to work hard. We have to work hard to secure and deserve this victory. We are on the right track, we have achieved a fantastic result, with more than 1.7 million Portuguese people placing their trust in us,” the former PS leader said in his victory speech at the Cultural and Congress Centre (CCC) in Caldas da Rainha last night. But there is still some way to go.
Asked about support he has already received – and the fact that the prime minister made a point of saying that he was not giving voting instructions for either candidate in the second round, Seguro was his inimitable measured self.
“With regard to institutional relations [with the prime minister], I will do everything I can, as I did in the first round, and I will continue to do so in the second round, so that they will not be affected when, on March 9, as I hope, I take office as the country’s president.”
Mr Seguro underlined the “non-partisan nature” of his candidacy – emphasising that he does not reject “any support” and is “very pleased with the support the PS has given him (…) But I am the one who is leading my campaign, as I did in the first round and will do in the second. I am the one who defines the strategy and I am the one who will determine at each moment who will speak in the campaigns and at the campaign events that we will hold,” he said.
He left this message particularly when asked whether he would have members of the PS government supporting him over the next three weeks. And again, he was measured in the way he answered questions on why, for example, PS leader José Luís Carneiro was not in Caldas Rainha with Seguro for the results. The response was ‘how good it was to see the Congress Centre applauding him completely full’ and how he ‘hadn’t asked anyone what party they supported’.
Source material: LUSA
